Also just for interest, I've been experimenting with image stacking. Here are two stitched panos put together in APG. The first is all the files loaded into APG and stitched. The shots are clearly processed and cropped differently, but the point I am trying compare is the relative smoothness of water and sky with stacking versus just chucking all the images into APG:

The second is the same shot however the base images that I used were stacked in photoshop first, just to clarify, this shot is made up of 3 shots x 3 brackets at each image location. Each bracketed exposure was shot 4 times. Therefore when I say the images were stacked, the 4 images that make up each bracket where stacked into TIFFs and then the 3x3 Tiffs were stitched:

Second, nope.....Kolor is set for profit.....a good thing since thanks to profit they survive....

Third, some thoughts....

A) The stary beach......I like the technique but I don't like 2 things.....the format of the photo.....I would go for more broadness (more rows) in a shoy like this and the fact that the beach is a bit slanted (can be corrected in Photoshop in a jiffy (make that half a jiffy)

B) The dock...I would like the water of the lower one and the processing of the upper one.....then you'd have a wonderfull photo....

C) The sunset......plain and simply a lovely picture......some shall say the sun is a bit white, but sending out light is part of it's mission statement and I like it that way

D) The landscape, feels also a bit slanted to the right.....(<- feels is different from is in this case)....which I would correct by rotating counterclockwise 2 to 3 degrees (and I would go to that trouble just before printing it as large as I could).

E) Which I then would regret.....since well the Barn, the Barn is poetry.....have seen a lot of barns of all sort and sizes (popular meme these days) but with a sky like that and color to match......great stuf.

greatlly appreciate your feedback. I have to admit to having been very busy working this month and I've been sloppy with the fine details of my shots.

Its funny how aspect ratios work. The star photo I shot in portrait orientation. When I cropped it, I had to use a ratio of 3.5:1 to get the best star segments into the image. A ratio of 3:1 works for images but I agree 100% 3.5:1 is too skinny as demonstrated by this image. I should have shot it half an hour earlier and the in landscape orientation and it would have been a better result. I think I shot it at ISO1600, again should have gone 3200 although there was a fair amount of moon light around so I think it was always going to be hard to balance. Live and learn I guess. I will definitely have a look at your points when I get some time. Thanks again.

Also Artisan, I think the price for APG is reasonable but I can't help my cynicism. I used to work for a software company who charged 20% per year annual maintenance fee for their software. The upgrade fee from APG 2 to APG 3 is 40% of new purchase price. APG is 2 and a bit years old. In my cynical mind I feel like Kolor has used 20% per annum effectively as a software maintenance fee and I have a built in prejudice to this approach because the company I worked for charged an arbitrary industry standard 20% maintenance fee and the amount of maintenance fee earnt by the company was far in excess of the cost of maintaining the software, i.e. the maintenance fees from existing users were in fact funding other software developments, not spent on improving software that the person paying the maintenance fee was using. So the people paying maintenance fees were subsidising the development cost for people to buy other software that the company wants to produce for different markets they want to get into. The company I worked for had the clear understanding that they were competitive with the upfront purchase price of the software and would often take a lower profit margin because they used the easy money they made on software support to prop this up in the knowledge that once people invest in the software, the price to change to another software was higher than the price of support so people were unlikely to move products. I run my own business, I understand the need for a business to make money to survive, but my pricing is cost reflective. That is to say that each customer pays for what they get, not to subsidise R&D for other peoples software. Now I know this is not how the world works, but this is how things work in my mind.

Of course this is not necessarily true for Kolor either, and of course in overall terms, the price of the software is not that high and we know it is highly productive and generally good software. And also we know that users of APG 2.6 have the option of not upgrading. Just explaining my thoughts on upgrade fees / maintenance fees. I don't expect something for nothing, I just have a built in bias to 20% per annum standard maintenance costs!

I am a strong advocate for the software and I wish Kolor continued success as my photography is heavily tied to panoramic stitching and APG.

The first pano which is star shot is nice. Then I like more the fenced in toned up than in stacked. Furthermore, between the other 3 panos i.e., setting sun, hegded and happy_Jan. Hedged is better than the other two.